The Value of Death
(First published anonymously in a Magazine of 2023: a pseudo-historic personal essay)
3/14/1592 A.D. : Florence
This is the conclusion of life: death —or at least, an ultimate truth for me. Nay, it is not a roundabout circumlocution that life has no purpose at all; nor am I more nihilistic than the one who is not, or at most, claims not to be the one. In fact, though there might be no such a thing as ‘fact’ in and of itself, an absolute fact, life can have a purpose if we adhere to it & confront the ultimate destiny of life itself. I repeat, life can have a meaning or purpose (then, why, sometimes, it seems as though it hasn’t?). A jaw dropping movement signs a contradiction. But it is just a converse of the statement that if death is the conclusion of life then, ultimately, the fear of death is the purpose of life.
I was born in a theologically well literate family. At seven, I could recite the Bible. When ten, I learned to write in seven different languages and also could speak them fluently at my eleventh birthday.
I always wanted to have an ardor to be a clergyman.
Like St. Augustine, St. Aquinos, St. Paul, Aristotle, and Boethius I wanted to be a philosophically sophisticated theologian. All I wanted was also satiated by the grace of God; so, I thought, I was consciously a non-resistant believer.
But wait, but wait… there was something I always admired the beauty of.
It was the patterns on the cathedrals, swinging lanterns, chirping of birds, musical things, about the Academy, the chalks, and lastly it ended on the compasses & the histories of all gloomy dark arts and then, at mathematics. It was there in mathematics that I found the ‘word of God.’ I read at Ezekiel 47:3–6 & concluded that God was ordering me to learn the mathemagic of mathematics & all the natural sciences. I had all colleagues of natural sciences & especially the Geometers & Yellow-teethed Zoologians to whom I argued passionately, and baffelingly.
But then again, wait: it is not a story of an eccentric theologian at at the verge of extreme niche.
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Of course, I had a good degree in natural philosophy & so started — as any reputed mathematicians — to study the mathematical arts & not only them but also theological debates, arts & music & even crimes themselves. I had also been gleefully successful on questioning at my own faith — in fact, faiths. (Overwhelmingly enough! ) For I believed there were two faiths: first, the existence of an ultimate justice, that is, my faith of God, and secondly, the existence of universal truths or self-evident propositions for the systematic study of thought and nature — or perhaps, in short, rational intelligibility of the world that in which we find ourselves. And I found that as all things essential & natural they — though compliments to each other — had their own forms. Sorry, not forms, but capital ‘Forms.’
And the Forms were nothing but the fear of death.
Oh! I had read Anaximander too. That fellow friend of Thales kept that humans have a transformative tendency. If only I had not kept my secret creation of a very important mathematical theorem (I wish I could not do it) I would, intellectually, confess that the thing was not at least the ultimate truth & that, its followers’ passion for the creation of certain knowledge was an utopia (I wish Gödel would do it). Had I not been the reputed bishop for all those fascinating thirty years (I wish I could enjoy those good old days being stimulated avid learner by the God’s magnanimous grandeur), I would elicit the Pope; for, he certainly feared of death and hence, had been striving for God’s grace: as many ‘rational’ intellectuals tried as they might but could not succeed (all hope only Dostoevsky would articulate it)
In so doing, I would not be considered a heretic neomaniac in both cases of inquiry.
But, as for now, I’m going to die. I had always admired the complexilty of mathematical & natural/logical philosophy — but not their pretensions, even after I suicided/killed my faiths/God only because I thought that I could have immortal glory after death on this real earth although the theological one could have been equally ‘real’ on its own right just like the mathematical. In other words, I find no ‘essential’ difference between both realms which claim themselves to be the most certain of all.
Hereby, I think that the philosophical method is the best method possible to not to be a resistent thinker in a long run: be it a Naturalist, Theist, Atheist, Rationalist, Platonist, Hellenist, Humanist, Classicist, Symbolist, Structuralist, Psychoanalyst, Receptionist, Formalist, Intuitionist, Logicist, Romanticist, or even Irrationalist or any other kind of ‘thinker’ who defines her/himself on her/his own basis of ‘thought’ given her/his own terms and definitions.
I think, my glory, though I may be revered as the ‘the Great Bishop…’ is as trivial thought like my soul’s rest in the eternal bliss beside God.
(“Gott ist tot. Gott bleibt tot. Und wir haben ihn getötet.”)
(God may not be dead & so may be meaning. Yet, the purpose of life is not dead yet: the fear of death.)
Blessed be those who confront to the ultimate truth that there is not even a crumble of an ultimate truth left (a self-refuting proposition!) & justice those who shan’t try to deny the burial of death & life, and who non- resistantly tend to create meaning & purpose despite apparently the most meaningless of all things — life & death themselves.
By Frantic Frank (Posthumous publication)
